Symphony D.
Deity
I'll note the reason for that is because of rather extreme penetration of the Manhatten Project, which has not been replicated in most major breakthroughs since, and the single-mindedness of Stalin in copying superior technology (such as the B-29 and Rolls Royce jet engines). Furthermore, the Soviet Union was the only country to possess it other than the United States for quite sometime. Both the British and French programs were assisted by the US, and China didn't develop their own bomb until the late 1960s, and then with Soviet assistance themselves. Had the program been better guarded, it would have taken all parties involved much longer to catch up.das said:
I would also note that the Soviet Union was a fellow superpower; a title no other country can today claim. Interestingly, no other country can keep up with American military developments today either, and it is rapidly running away with the military technology lead, while its potential competitors (for example, China) are once again forced to adopt strategies to counter its technology. Coincidence? I think not.
Sufficiently advanced technology forces your enemies to move to counter your advantages. If this technology is far enough ahead as to confer an overwhelming benefit (say, for example, this) then even those counter-strategies no longer work because it becomes so advanced as to render the user nigh invulnerable. Think of Cortez and his 200 men beating the Aztec Empire (admittedly, they were aided incalculably by disease, but they did fight some fairly hairy battles against vastly greater numbers; as did Pizarro). There's a reason Arthur C. Clark once said "Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
Any war that was started with it in that timespan or thereafter against an opponent with fewer of them or lacking adequate delivery systems would very quickly be won. Whether a war was won with the weapon is immaterial; whether it can be won is what is important in the context of NESing.das said:
For example, something only a power with sufficient space technology (read: United States or Russia) can do. If the United States really wanted to have a simple conclusion to the Middle East problem, it would smuggle several thruster and guidance packages into the NASA launch schedule, fit them to a suitable sized asteroid, and very gradually and subtly alter its course before GPS guiding it down onto say, Tehran. Afterwards you can dismiss it as a terribly unfortunate natural accident and pledge greater funding to the search for Near Earth Objects, and what will your enemies say? That you can smite them with space debris?
Or, say, an engineered bacteria that's a hybrid of oil-cleanup bacteria and deep, geological bacteria suddenly finds itself into the oil wells of most major oil producing countries...
These are examples of something you want to keep hidden. If you want to be obvious the potentials are even greater. These are examples of weapons which are difficult if not impossible to stop and which require a very strong technological base to deploy. Uganda is not going to be able to drop space rocks on people on a whim, and neither, for that matter, is even the European Union or China (and likely not Russia either).
This is without going into your ordinary, conventional weapons. For example, a single F-22 Raptor can easily counter and destroy four or more F-15 Eagles, despite the fact they were its immediate predecessor. What might it do to older technology, like say, the Su-21? Did you know the last recorded instance of prop-fighter combat? Soccer War, 1969. While America was carpet-bombing Vietnam with B-52s and dropping napalm from Mach 2-capable F-4s, Guatemala and Honduras were fighting with WWII vintage P-51 Mustangs. I hear there are still T-34/85s lingering around in certain African states.
Modern technology is expensive, not just to buy and operate, but most especially to develop. This is why Europeans tend to cooperate on developing new hardware, and why most countries buy either from them, the Americans, or the Russians (in fact, several countries export precisely to make up for development costs). As technology becomes more intricate and advanced, it will only become more expensive, and this trend will only continue. Like it or not, the future belongs to the person with the best gear, because beyond a certain point, all the tactics, strategy, and training in the world will not be able to counter the sheer advantage of having superior equipment if it is advanced enough compared to that of the opposition. The technocrat wins.
Starting a NES with highly-developed technology is therefore a bad idea unless one is willing to be very precise in their handling with it, because it, more than anything else, will make and break the game (see, for example, Goober giving Stormbringer anti-matter weaponry... that game should have ended that turn).
Given the rather token coastal patrols the United States did field earlier in the war, I don't imagine anybody really cared much. The best the Japanese could accomplish would be a raid on a major naval base like San Diego or San Francisco, and quite frankly they couldn't even do that. It'd be like Normandy made about a million times more difficult; vastly greater distance, vastly greater opposition (civilian and military). American airpower advantage alone would be enough to destroy any such enterprise, ignoring ground forces; you can't sink a terrestrial airbase.das said:
